Wish poems
/ page 84 of 92 /
Momus
© Carl Sandburg
Momus is the name men give your face,
The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle
Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland,
Where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray
Against horizons purple, silent.
Medallion
© Carl Sandburg
THE BRASS medallion profile of your face I keep always.
It is not jingling with loose change in my pockets.
It is not stuck up in a show place on the office wall.
I carry it in a special secret pocket in the day
Margaret
© Carl Sandburg
Many birds and the beating of wings
Make a flinging reckless hum
In the early morning at the rocks
Above the blue pool
Where the gray shadows swim lazy.
Helga
© Carl Sandburg
THE WISHES on this childs mouth
Came like snow on marsh cranberries;
The tamarack kept something for her;
The wind is ready to help her shoes.
Five Cent Balloons
© Carl Sandburg
PIETRO has twenty red and blue balloons on a string.
They flutter and dance pulling Pietros arm.
A nickel apiece is what they sell for.
Falltime
© Carl Sandburg
GOLD of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon,
Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue,
Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts,
Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence,
Do You Want Affidavits?
© Carl Sandburg
THERES a hole in the bottom of the sea.
Do you want affidavits?
Theres a man in the moon with money for you.
Do you want affidavits?
Circles of Doors
© Carl Sandburg
I LOVE him, I love him, ran the patter of her lips
And she formed his name on her tongue and sang
And she sent him word she loved him so much,
So much, and death was nothing; work, art, home,
Child Margaret
© Carl Sandburg
THE CHILD Margaret begins to write numbers on a Saturday morning, the first numbers formed under her wishing child fingers.
All the numbers come well-born, shaped in figures assertive for a frieze in a childs room.
Both 1 and 7 are straightforward, military, filled with lunge and attack, erect in shoulder-straps.
The 6 and 9 salute as dancing sisters, elder and younger, and 2 is a trapeze actor swinging to handclaps.
Balloon Faces
© Carl Sandburg
THE BALLOONS hang on wires in the Marigold Gardens.
They spot their yellow and gold, they juggle their blue and red, they float their faces on the face of the sky.
Balloon face eaters sit by hundreds reading the eat cards, asking, What shall we eat?and the waiters, Have you ordered? they are sixty ballon faces sifting white over the tuxedoes.
Poets, lawyers, ad men, mason contractors, smartalecks discussing educated jackasses, here they put crabs into their balloon faces.
A. E. F.
© Carl Sandburg
THERE will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,
The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust.
A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it.
The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty.
Wilderness
© Carl Sandburg
THERE is a wolf in me
fangs pointed for tearing gashes
a red tongue for raw meat
and the hot lapping of bloodI keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fox in me
a silver-gray fox
I sniff and guess
I pick things out of the wind and air
I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers
I circle and loop and double-cross.
Nights Nothings Again
© Carl Sandburg
WHO knows what I know
when I have asked the night questions
and the night has answered nothing
only the old answers?
Mag
© Carl Sandburg
I WISH to God I never saw you, Mag.
I wish you never quit your job and came along with me.
I wish we never bought a license and a white dress
For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister
Halsted Street Car
© Carl Sandburg
COME you, cartoonists,
Hang on a strap with me here
At seven o'clock in the morning
On a Halsted street car.
The Lawyers Know Too Much
© Carl Sandburg
THE LAWYERS, Bob, know too much.
They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.
They know it all, what a dead hand wrote,
A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling,
A Mysterious Naked Man
© Alden Nowlan
A mysterious naked man has been reported
on Cranston Avenue. The police are performing
the usual ceremonies with coloured lights and sirens.
Almost everyone is outdoors and strangers are conversing
Sancta Maria, Succurre Miseris
© Amy Lowell
Dear Virgin Mary, far away,
Look down from Heaven while I pray.
Open your golden casement high,
And lean way out beyond the sky.
Reaping
© Amy Lowell
You want to know what's the matter with me, do yer?
My! ain't men blinder'n moles?
It ain't nothin' new, be sure o' that.
Why, ef you'd had eyes you'd ha' seed
